Psychophysical Tasks Research Articles

Effect of auditory motion velocity on reaction time and cortical processes

The study investigated the processing of sound motion, employing a psychophysical motion discrimination task in combination with electroencephalography. Following stationary auditory stimulation from a central space position, the onset of left- and rightward motion elicited a specific cortical response that was lateralized to the hemisphere contralateral to the direction of motion. The contralaterality of the motion onset response decreased when the velocity was reduced. Higher motion velocity was associated with larger and earlier cortical responses and with shorter reaction times to motion onset. The results indicate a close correspondence of brain activity and behavioral performance in auditory motion detection.

Effects of High-Rate Pulse Trains on Electrode Discrimination in Cochlear Implant Users

Overcoming issues related to abnormally high neural synchrony in response to electrical stimulation is one aspect in improving hearing with a cochlear implant. Desynchronization of electrical stimuli have shown benefits in neural encoding of electrical signals and improvements in psychophysical tasks. In the present study, 10 participants with either CII or HiRes 90k Advanced Bionics devices were tested for the effects of desynchronizing constant-amplitude high-rate (5,000 Hz) pulse trains on electrode discrimination of sinusoidal stimuli (1,000 Hz). When averaged across the sinusoidal dynamic range, overall improvements in electrode discrimination with high-rate pulses were found for 8 of 10 participants. This effect was significant for the group (p = .003). Nonmonotonic patterns of electrode discrimination as a function of sinusoidal stimulation level were observed. By providing additional spectral channels, it is possible that clinical implementation of constant-amplitude high-rate pulse trains in a signal processing strategy may improve performance with the device.

Influence of Sound Source Location on the Behavior and Physiology of the Precedence Effect in Cats

Psychophysical experiments on the precedence effect (PE) in cats have shown that they localize pairs of auditory stimuli presented from different locations in space based on the spatial position of the stimuli and the interstimulus delay (ISD) between the stimuli in a manner similar to humans. Cats exhibit localization dominance for pairs of transient stimuli with |ISDs| from approximately 0.4 to 10 ms, summing localization for |ISDs| < 0.4 ms and breakdown of fusion for |ISDs| > 10 ms, which is the approximate echo threshold. The neural correlates to the PE have been described in both anesthetized and unanesthetized animals at many levels from auditory nerve to cortex. Single-unit recordings from the inferior colliculus (IC) and auditory cortex of cats demonstrate that neurons respond to both lead and lag sounds at ISDs above behavioral echo thresholds, but the response to the lag is reduced at shorter ISDs, consistent with localization dominance. Here the influence of the relative locations of the leading and lagging sources on the PE was measured behaviorally in a psychophysical task and physiologically in the IC of awake behaving cats. At all configurations of lead-lag stimulus locations, the cats behaviorally exhibited summing localization, localization dominance, and breakdown of fusion. Recordings from the IC of awake behaving cats show neural responses paralleling behavioral measurements. Both behavioral and physiological results suggest systematically shorter echo thresholds when stimuli are further apart in space.

Reward sharpens orientation coding independently on attention

AbstractRewarding improves performance. Is it due to modulations of the output modules of the neural systems or are there mechanisms favoring more 'generous' inputs? Some recent study included V1 in the the circuitry of reward-based modulations, but the effects of reward can easily be confused with effects of attention. Here we address this issue with a psychophysical dual task to control attention while orientation sensitivity on targets associated to different levels of reward is measured. We found that different reward rates improve orientation discrimination and sharpen the internal response distributions. Data are unaffected by changing attentional load nor by dissociating the feature of the reward cue from the feature relevant for the task. This suggests that reward may act independently on attention by modulating the activity of early sensory stages, perhaps V1, through a SNR improvement of task-relevant channels. Reward acts like attention, but using separate channels.

Improved fundamental frequency coding in cochlear implant signal processing

A new signal processing algorithm for improved pitch perception in cochlear implants is proposed. The algorithm realizes fundamental frequency (F0) coding by explicitly modulating the amplitude of the electrical stimulus. The proposed processing scheme is compared with the standard advanced combination encoder strategy in psychophysical music perception related tasks. Possible filter-bank and loudness cues between the strategies under study were minimized to predominantly focus on differences in temporal processing. The results demonstrate significant benefits provided by the new coding strategy for pitch ranking, melodic contour identification, and familiar melody identification.

Dynamic Readout of Behaviorally Relevant Signals from Area MT during Task Switching

The processes underlying dynamic changes in human behavior during real situations contain much irrelevant information and represent a key issue facing neuroscientists. Although the roles played by the frontal cortex in this switching behavior have been well documented, little is known regarding how neural pathways governing sensorimotor associations accomplish such a switch. We addressed this question by recording activities of middle temporal (MT) neurons in monkeys switching between direction versus depth discrimination tasks. Although the monkeys successfully switched between the tasks, neural sensitivity did not change as a function of task. More importantly, neurons that signaled the same motor output showed trial-to-trial covariation between neuronal responses and perceptual judgments during both tasks, whereas neurons that signaled the opposite motor output showed no covariation in either task. These results suggest that task switching is accomplished via communication from distinct populations of neurons when sensorimotor associations switch within a short time period.

Psychophysical spectro-temporal receptive fields in an auditory task

Psychophysical relative weighting functions, which provide information about the importance of different regions of a stimulus in forming decisions, are traditionally estimated using trial-based procedures, where a single stimulus is presented and a single response is recorded. Everyday listening is much more “free-running” in that we often must detect randomly occurring signals in the presence of a continuous background. Psychophysical relative weighting functions have not been measured with free-running paradigms. Here, we combine a free-running paradigm with the reverse correlation technique used to estimate physiological spectro-temporal receptive fields (STRFs) to generate psychophysical relative weighting functions that are analogous to physiological STRFs. The psychophysical task required the detection of a fixed target signal (a sequence of spectro-temporally coherent tone pips with a known frequency) in the presence of a continuously presented informational masker (spectro-temporally random tone pips). A comparison of psychophysical relative weighting functions estimated with the current free-running paradigm and trial-based paradigms, suggests that in informational-masking tasks subjects’ decision strategies are similar in both free-running and trial-based paradigms. For more cognitively challenging tasks there may be differences in the decision strategies with free-running and trial-based paradigms.

A double dissociation between striate and extrastriate visual cortex for pattern motion perception revealed using rTMS

The neural mechanisms underlying the integration and segregation of motion signals are often studied using plaid stimuli. These stimuli consist of two spatially coincident dynamic gratings of differing orientations, which are either perceived to move in two unique directions or are integrated by the visual system to elicit the percept of a checkerboard moving in a single direction. Computations pertaining to the motion of the individual component gratings are thought to take place in striate cortex (V1) whereas motion integration is thought to involve neurons in dorsal stream extrastriate visual areas, particularly V5/MT. By combining a psychophysical task that employed plaid stimuli with 1 Hz offline repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), we demonstrated a double dissociation between striate and extrastriate visual cortex in terms of their contributions to motion integration. rTMS over striate cortex increased coherent motion percepts whereas rTMS over extrastriate cortex had the opposite effect. These effects were robust directly after the stimulation administration and gradually returned to baseline within 15 minutes. This double dissociation is consistent with previous patient data and the recent hypothesis that both coherent and transparent motion percepts are supported by the visual system simultaneously and compete for perceptual dominance.

Bayesian models of eye movement selection with retinotopic maps

Among the various possible criteria guiding eye movement selection, we investigate the role of position uncertainty in the peripheral visual field. In particular, we suggest that, in everyday life situations of object tracking, eye movement selection probably includes a principle of reduction of uncertainty. To evaluate this hypothesis, we confront the movement predictions of computational models with human results from a psychophysical task. This task is a freely moving eye version of the multiple object tracking task, where the eye movements may be used to compensate for low peripheral resolution. We design several Bayesian models of eye movement selection with increasing complexity, whose layered structures are inspired by the neurobiology of the brain areas implied in this process. Finally, we compare the relative performances of these models with regard to the prediction of the recorded human movements, and show the advantage of taking explicitly into account uncertainty for the prediction of eye movements.

Limits of stereopsis explained by local cross-correlation

Human stereopsis has two well-known constraints: the disparity-gradient limit, which is the inability to perceive depth when the change in disparity within a region is too large, and the limit of stereoresolution, which is the inability to perceive spatial variations in disparity that occur at too fine a spatial scale. We propose that both limitations can be understood as byproducts of estimating disparity by cross-correlating the two eyes' images, the fundamental computation underlying the disparity-energy model. To test this proposal, we constructed a local cross-correlation model with biologically motivated properties. We then compared model and human behaviors in the same psychophysical tasks. The model and humans behaved quite similarly: they both exhibited a disparity-gradient limit and had similar stereoresolution thresholds. Performance was affected similarly by changes in a variety of stimulus parameters. By modeling the effects of stimulus blur and of using different sizes of image patches, we found evidence that the smallest neural mechanism humans use to estimate disparity is 3-6 arcmin in diameter. We conclude that the disparity-gradient limit and stereoresolution are indeed byproducts of using local cross-correlation to estimate disparity.

Stimulus dynamics and temporal discrimination: Implications for pacemakers.

The purpose of the present study was to observe the functional relationship between stimulus dynamics and stimulus duration judgments in humans. Stimulus duration was defined as the length of time that a spinning sphere appeared on a computer screen. Stimulus dynamics were defined by how quickly the sphere rotated on its y-axis. Using a logarithmic scale, a psychophysical bisection task was used to divide stimulus durations into two categories, short and long. Across three experiments, participants' duration judgments were longer the faster the sphere was rotated. This effect was observed over both a long and short temporal scale and over a wide range of stimulus dynamics despite the fact that the reinforcement contingencies penalized participants for this effect. The results are discussed in terms of perceived change as the possible basis of temporal duration estimation. This hypothesis was investigated through applications of the leading quantitative models of temporal discrimination to the present data.

Mapping serotonin transporters with [ 11C]DASB positron emission tomography in common marmosets under conscious condition: comparison with macaque monkeys

The common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) has been valuable as a primate model in biomedical research. Interest in this species has grown recently, in part due to the successful demonstration of transgenic marmosets. Here we examine the prospects of the marmoset model for visual neuroscience research, adopting a comparative framework to place the marmoset within a broader evolutionary context. The marmoset's small brain bears most of the organizational features of other primates, and its smooth surface offers practical advantages over the macaque for areal mapping, laminar electrode penetration, and two-photon and optical imaging. Behaviorally, marmosets are more limited at performing regimented psychophysical tasks, but do readily accept the head restraint that is necessary for accurate eye tracking and neurophysiology, and can perform simple discriminations. Their natural gaze behavior closely resembles that of other primates, with a tendency to focus on objects of social interest including faces. Their immaturity at birth and routine twinning also makes them ideal for the study of postnatal visual development. These experimental factors, together with the theoretical advantages inherent in comparing anatomy, physiology, and behavior across related species, make the marmoset an excellent model for visual neuroscience.

Reactivity to visual signals and the cerebellar vermis: Evidence from a rare case with rhombencephalosynapsis.

The modulatory role of the cerebellum was investigated in a case with rhombencephalosynapsis (RS), a rare dysplasia characterized by the absence of the cerebellar vermis. The visual psychophysical task involved localizing a target and ignoring a distractor appearing either before, at the same time as, or after the target. It allowed us to assess reactivity to warning signals, distraction, and reactivity to signals appearing during attentive processing. Compared with a control sample, the patient exhibited greater reactivity to warning signals and difficulties interrupting attentive processing, whereas distraction was not increased. Complementary analyses showed that these deficits did not reflect just delayed development of attentional processes. These results suggest that the cerebellum modulates responsiveness and commands attentional/exploratory flexibility in response to sensory signals.

Modeling sequential context effects in judgment analysis: A time series approach

AbstractIn this article a broad perspective incorporating elements of time series theory is presented for conceptualizing the data obtained in multi-trial judgment experiments. Recent evidence suggests that sequential context effects, assimilation and contrast, commonly found in psychophysical judgment tasks, may be present in judgments of abstract magnitudes. A time series approach for analyzing single-subject data is developed and applied to expert prognostic judgments of risk for heart disease with an emphasis on detecting possible sequential context effects. The results demonstrate that sequential context effects do exist in such expert prognostic judgments. Contrast and assimilation were produced by cue series; the latter occurring more frequently. Experts also showed assimilation of prior responses that was independent of the cue series input. Time series analysis also revealed that abrupt or large trial-by-trial changes in the value of cues that receive the most attention in prognostic judgment tasks can disrupt the accuracy of these judgments. These findings suggest that a time series approach is a useful alternative to ordinary least squares regression, providing additional insights into the cognitive processes operating during multi-cue judgment experiments.

Effects of velocity and motion-onset delay on detection and discrimination of sound motion

The effect of velocity on auditory motion processing in combination with a motion-onset delay was investigated in two experiments. The detection of motion onset and discrimination of motion direction were studied, employing a psychophysical reaction time task. Listeners were presented with sounds moving along the frontal horizontal plane in a dark anechoic environment. Response times (RTs) were measured, while the velocity (20°/s, 40°/s, 80°/s) and the motion-onset delay (the time between sound onset and start of motion: 0, 200, 500, 1000 ms) were varied. Listeners responded faster with higher velocity and longer motion-onset delay. In particular, with higher velocity, the function relating RT to motion-onset delay had a steeper initial decrease than with lower velocities. The results are in line with psychophysical studies of the minimum audible movement angle and recent electrophysiological data about the role of motion velocity in auditory motion processing. The effect of motion-onset delay is discussed with regard to a dynamic temporal window, in which auditory spatial information is integrated until enough information is accumulated to trigger motion detection.

The Potential for New Understandings of Normal and Abnormal Cognition by Integration of Neuroimaging and Behavioral Data: Not an Exercise in Carrying Coals to Newcastle

Discovering the means to prevent and cure schizophrenia is a vision that motivates many scientists. But in order to achieve this goal, we need to understand its neurobiological basis. The emergent metadiscipline of cognitive neuroscience fields an impressive array of tools that can be marshaled towards achieving this goal, including powerful new methods of imaging the brain (both structural and functional) as well as assessments of perceptual and cognitive capacities based on psychophysical procedures, experimental tasks and models developed by cognitive science. We believe that the integration of data from this array of tools offers the greatest possibilities and potential for advancing understanding of the neural basis of not only normal cognition but also the cognitive impairments that are fundamental to schizophrenia. Since sufficient expertise in the application of these tools and methods rarely reside in a single individual, or even a single laboratory, collaboration is a key element in this endeavor. Here, we review some of the products of our integrative efforts in collaboration with our colleagues on the East Coast of Australia and Pacific Rim. This research focuses on the neural basis of executive function deficits and impairments in early auditory processing in patients using various combinations of performance indices (from perceptual and cognitive paradigms), ERPs, fMRI and sMRI. In each case, integration of two or more sources of information provides more information than any one source alone by revealing new insights into structure-function relationships. Furthermore, the addition of other imaging methodologies (such as DTI) and approaches (such as computational models of cognition) offers new horizons in human brain imaging research and in understanding human behavior.

Design and Validation of an Infrared Badal Optometer for Laser Speckle

To validate the design of an infrared wavefront aberrometer with a Badal optometer employing the principle of laser speckle generated by a spinning disk and infrared light. The instrument was designed for subjective meridional refraction in infrared light by human patients. Validation employed a model eye with known refractive error determined with an objective infrared wavefront aberrometer. The model eye was used to produce a speckle pattern on an artificial retina with controlled amounts of ametropia introduced with auxiliary ophthalmic lenses. A human observer performed the psychophysical task of observing the speckle pattern (with the aid of a video camera sensitive to infrared radiation) formed on the artificial retina. Refraction was performed by adjusting the vergence of incident light with the Badal optometer to nullify the motion of laser speckle. Validation of the method was performed for different levels of spherical ametropia and for various configurations of an astigmatic model eye. Subjective measurements of meridional refractive error over the range -4D to +4D agreed with astigmatic refractive errors predicted by the power of the model eye in the meridian of motion of the spinning disk. Use of a Badal optometer to control laser speckle is a valid method for determining subjective refractive error at infrared wavelengths. Such an instrument will be useful for comparing objective measures of refractive error obtained for the human eye with autorefractors and wavefront aberrometers that employ infrared radiation.

Subclinical sensory abnormalities in unaffected PINK1 heterozygotes

Mutations in the PINK1 gene, encoding a mitochondrial protein kinase, represent the second cause of autosomal recessive parkinsonism (ARP) after Parkin. While homozygous or compound heterozygous mutations in these genes are unequivocally causative of ARP, the role of single heterozygous mutations is still largely debated. An intriguing hypothesis suggests that these mutations could represent a risk factor to develop parkinsonism, by contributing to nigral cell degeneration. Since the substantia nigra plays an important role in temporal processing of sensory stimuli, as revealed from studies in idiopathic PD, we sought to investigate whether any subclinical sensory abnormalities could be detected in patients with PINK1- related parkinsonism and in unaffected PINK1 heterozygous carriers. We adopted a psychophysical method, the temporal discrimination paradigm, to assess PINK1 homozygous patients, unaffected relatives who were heterozygous carriers of the same mutations and healthy control subjects. Temporal discrimination threshold (TDT) and temporal order judgement (TOJ) for pairs of tactile, visual or visuo-tactile stimuli were measured according to a standardized protocol. Higher mean tactile and visuo-tactile TDTs and TOJs were detected in PINK1 mutation carriers, including not only homozygous patients but also healthy heterozygotes, compared to control subjects (for all comparisons, p < 0.001). In clinically unaffected subjects, the mere presence of a heterozygous PINK1 mutation is sufficient to determine sensory alterations which can be disclosed by a psychophysical task. Deficits in temporal processing might be considered as subclinical signs of alteration at least in PINK1-related parkinsonism.

Multivariate Patterns in Object-Selective Cortex Dissociate Perceptual and Physical Shape Similarity

Prior research has identified the lateral occipital complex (LOC) as a critical cortical region for the representation of object shape in humans. However, little is known about the nature of the representations contained in the LOC and their relationship to the perceptual experience of shape. We used human functional MRI to measure the physical, behavioral, and neural similarity between pairs of novel shapes to ask whether the representations of shape contained in subregions of the LOC more closely reflect the physical stimuli themselves, or the perceptual experience of those stimuli. Perceptual similarity measures for each pair of shapes were obtained from a psychophysical same-different task; physical similarity measures were based on stimulus parameters; and neural similarity measures were obtained from multivoxel pattern analysis methods applied to anterior LOC (pFs) and posterior LOC (LO). We found that the pattern of pairwise shape similarities in LO most closely matched physical shape similarities, whereas shape similarities in pFs most closely matched perceptual shape similarities. Further, shape representations were similar across participants in LO but highly variable across participants in pFs. Together, these findings indicate that activation patterns in subregions of object-selective cortex encode objects according to a hierarchy, with stimulus-based representations in posterior regions and subjective and observer-specific representations in anterior regions.

Effects of acute alcohol consumption and alcohol expectancy on processing of perceptual cues of emotional expression

We recently demonstrated that alcohol elicits a difference between men and women in perceptual threshold for facial expressions of sadness. However, this study did not include a manipulation of alcohol expectancy. Therefore, we sought to determine whether these effects may be due to the expectation of having consumed alcohol. Male and female participants (n = 100) were randomised using a balanced-placebo design to receive either an alcoholic or a non-alcoholic drink and to be told that this was alcoholic or non-alcoholic. Participants completed a psychophysical task which presented male and female faces expressing angry, happy, and sad emotions. Analysis of threshold data indicated a significant two-way interaction of drink x target emotion, reflecting a higher threshold for the detection of sad facial expressions of emotion, compared with angry or happy expressions, in the alcohol condition compared with the placebo condition. We did not observe any evidence of sex differences in these effects. Our data indicate that alcohol modifies the perceptual threshold for facial expressions of sadness. Unlike our previous report, we did not observe evidence of sex differences in these effects. Most importantly, we did not observe any evidence that these effects were due to expectancy effects associated with alcohol consumption.